Steven Rea

Contributing Movie Critic

One of my favorite Elizabeth Taylor roles is Angela Vickers, the seductive society girl in George Stevens’ dark and tragic 1951 melodrama, A Place in the Sun. Angela is everything that the social-climbing George Eastman – Montgomery Clift – hungers for: beauty, wit, wealth. Alas, his factory worker girlfriend, Alice (Shelley Winters) gets pregnant, and George finds himself tethered to the uncouth, clingy “Al.” And so, a plot to take her out on Loon Lake in a rowboat, and to return to shore without her, starts percolating. And all the while Taylor’s Angela stands around being radiant, and wonderful. Here’s a great photo – by Peter Stackpole, for Life magazine – of Taylor and Clift, all smiles, leaning against a soundstage wall on the Paramount lot during a break in production.